Fishing Reports

 

Well everything has started to 'hot up' in the Bay with some big snapper coming to scale, the first of the tuna, and marlin sightings along the coast. Mita's Foul may have looked like a boat parking lot over the last few weeks, but big spawning fish have been giving great fishing, though mainly on the outgoing tide. The word may have been out for Mita's, but good catches seem to have been reported from most areas of the bay, and much of our success over the last few days has been from small patches of soft foul in the mud between Mita's and Onslow rocks. The advamtage here is that while the snapper do go off the bite, there are still tarakihi to be caught. For best results, perservere with ledger rigs, as the fish don't seem to be hitting hard, and will often drop a bait. A quickly struck ledger rig will give you a chance on that first bite. Please think of the fish at this time of year though, as they are full of roe, ready to breed, and every fish you take depletes the fishery of thousands of eggs. We encourage our own clients to perhaps keep one good fish, then make up the feed with a few pannies and tarakihi. A couple of trips out wide, also gave good results this week, with Mondays trip out to the 750m line, outside the Nine Pin Trenches, giving us 7 albacore, all from 6kg to 9kg, with the added bonus of the first yellowfin on the way back in. The yellowfin took a small pink and white 'Doorknob' lure, in just 200m of water inside Main Rock. Although the first of the season, it won't count officially for our angler, as our Club rules require Yellowfin to go line weight, and the fish tipped the scale at 23.6kg, on 24kg line. The fish was no fluke, as Mark Nolan, skippering aboard GPS, also caught a yellowfin about 30 minutes later, up in Takou Bay. His fish was also over 20kg, but was taken on 37kg gear. Although subsequent trips have yielded skipjack, and albacore, no more yellowfin have been reported, but that should change over coming weeks, as more boats go out wide for a fish. Our trips out wide are also giving us consistent results on hapuka, though everything we gutted over the weekend was full of large mackerel, which would explain why live jack mackerel were the only baits working. Plenty of live baits are available within the Bay, so it would pay to make sure you always have a few in the bait tank. Kingfish continue to be patchy, though plenty of smaller fish around Bird Rock are responding to small baits and jigs. As always, drop me a line at MAJOR.TOM@xtra.co.nz if you have any questions. Geoff Stone

 

From Major Tom II

Report type: Saltwater

Report date: 27 November 00